


Demonic Department Stores and Their Guardian Angels

by sorrens



Series: Love Thy Self as You Do Unto Others [2]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: BAMF Crowley (Good Omens), Body Positivity, Comforting Aziraphale (Good Omens), Fluff, Fluff and Humor, Gen, Self-Acceptance, Self-Esteem Issues, love yourself, please, wear all the clothes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-04
Updated: 2019-08-04
Packaged: 2020-07-30 23:24:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,915
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20105350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sorrens/pseuds/sorrens
Summary: Aziraphale struggles to understand why society is so invested in clothing sizes and chats to some girls whose choices are governed by them. Also, Primark is Crowley's pet project and the angel becomes a fashion advisor.





	Demonic Department Stores and Their Guardian Angels

**Author's Note:**

> I do not have the brain cell at the moment to make the in text links I'm sorry, I'll get back to it.  
Slight trigger warning for body talk and size mentions, if that's not quite your jam.

For an angel, the verb “to deserve” was pretty clear cut.

He was charged with protecting humanity, and loving them, and even beyond the job description he firmly believed each of them deserving. Even the truely wicked. No, no one deserved cruelty, rather, forgiveness and a chance to repent. Deserve was used in some frightening ways by humans as modern language developed. The notion of karma had existed in certain religions for innumerable centuries. There was, even outside of religion, a generally accepted sense of “what goes around comes around” but now what came around did so with a terrifying, destructive force and the humans brushed it off as what the victim had “deserved.”

Did the man who ran a puppy farm deserve to die from a canine-borne virus that caused him to go in to septic shock? It was a poetic sort of justice, Aziraphale could grant them that, but his demise was a far cry from what he deserved.

Despite all of the tainted souls that the angel had encountered (and Crowley had undoubtably shown in the direction of hell later on), he struggled to reconcile that any one person deserved any amount of pain.

He was somewhat out of touch with current events, of late. It was overwhelming to see destruction on such a large scale and feel frustratingly powerless (miracles can only achieve so much). Instead, the angel focussed his energies on those around him, the inhabitants of London who piqued his interest. He was always trying to spread Her message [1] and that was how he found himself folding shirts in a Primark west of the city.

* * *

He’d allowed Crowley to drag him along whilst he conducted one of his annual “audits” of the low-cost [2] fashion brand. It was one of his pet-projects that Hell really didn’t care for, but he’d stuck with the chain all the same and gently nudged it to expand out in to suburban shopping centres. With the demon, it was always the little annoyances, the things that rubbed you the wrong way and festered in the back of your mind until someone looks at you funny and suddenly you’re raging. Primark was a cesspit of these little mind worms. Crowley had excitedly explained the intricacies of the store to Aziraphale the day previously. It was not, the angel decided, his cup of tea, to hang around a messy, noisy department store filled with teenagers shrieking but the excitement on the demon’s face as he’d explained how he’d personally gone and meddled with the inventory made him soft.

Crowley was aghast at the suggestion that their clothing was made in sweatshops with dangerous conditions “I don’t have a handle in that part of the production line, Angel, it’s those humans. Those bastards.” He hissed and made a mental note [3] to follow that up. He, however, was responsible for 5 things:

  1. The inconsistency of sizing 
  2. The irritatingly loud be-bop music that permeated even the most isolated areas of the store.
  3. The “throw” tables, where all manner of garments are piled lovingly together with a large 5 pound sign hanging above. Of course, whatever you dig out and take a liking to will actually be 7 pounds.
  4. The way the clothes managed to hold together until the second the return policy ended, as if they’d been scared senseless by a demon who had threatened them with incineration lest they last for no more or less than 30 days past the purchase date.
  5. Fishnet tights (that was more of a general thing, but he always made sure Primark stocked a healthy supply of the counterintuitive buggers)

* * *

As the demon stalked around in a suit with a clipboard (Jim, from head office, naturally.), Aziraphale did what he did best: he fussed. The store looked halfway between his local Marks and Spencer’s and a bomb site and thus sat quite firmly in the territory of “a potential fire and/or safety hazard”. There were a couple of teenage girls with radios dashing about the shop floor, looking frazzled. There was maybe one employee per ten thousand garments and, with a bout of sympathy, Aziraphale found himself absentmindedly folding shirts as he waited.

That was when he heard young voices arguing in an adjacent aisle.

“They have plenty of size 6’s in the jeans but only one size 10? That’s so unfair.”

“Rosie, I thought you were a size 12.”

“Yes, but I don’t want to be.” The voice sneered. “Besides, I don’t deserve to wear these pants if I’m a size 12.”

“Right, because they are a size 10.” Her friend replied sarcastically.

“No, I just wouldn’t be caught dead in jeggings with these legs.”

There was a silence before her friend answered, sounding quite hurt.

“I’m a size 14, Rosie. How do you think I feel?”

“That’s not what I meant!” Rosie stumbled over her words. “You look great in your clothes. Besides, you’re a bit taller than me and everything looks good on you. I’m sorry, that sounded a bit rude.”

“Well,” said her friend brusquely “Why don’t we ask if they’ve got a 12 out the back anyway? And a 14, for good measure, so we can try them on together.”

There was a renewed warmth in Rosie’s reply.

“Yeah, sure.”

* * *

Aziraphale was the last person you’d suspect to be working in a young adult fashion shop. From his dusty leather brogues up to, well it belies justification, he presented as a 50-year-old male, so why was he approached by two awkward teenagers sporting braces and clutching a pair of stretchy jeans.

_Ah, he was folding shirts. The universal identifier of a store employee._

“Er…Excuse me, could you please check out the back if you have any of these in a _larger_ size.” The girl, Rosie, had lowered her voice for the last part and Aziraphale wasn’t quite sure why.

“Ah, yes, certainly! Back in a jiffy!” The angel took the jeans and walked determinedly away from the friends. Once he’d rounded a corner and was sure he was out of sight he contemplated what to do. He could miracle some duplicates of the jeans in larger sizes. He could actually go out the back and look himself (an effort he hoped the store would at least award him with the minimum wage for his time thank-you-very-much).

Sizes.

Aziraphale didn’t think to much of them. Partially because whatever item of clothing he chose, he expected it to fit and so it did. It hadn’t occurred to him that humans were in the habit of knowing the dimensions of their own body so exactly they could pluck some jeans off the rack in their size. What’s more, it seemed to be a currency, he observed as he replayed the girls’ conversation in his mind. A sense of “less is more”. The way the girl whispered that she needed a larger size. Yes, there was some kind of pride in being less. That wasn’t his understanding of deserving, struggling to erase yourself, as if apologising for even existing. Again, he couldn’t quite comment for Her, but maybe the times had changed and definitions were changing with it. He wanted to understand what it takes to deserves something.

Dropping the pretence of actually finding the girl’s their jeans, the angel marched back over to the friends. He had a few questions. Call it market research for heaven. There would be a memo afterwards.

“Sorry, my dear, I was wondering if you could clarify something for me?”

Rosie frowned.

“If we have to be more specific I’d say we need a 12 or a 14.”

“No, no. I just wanted to know how you would deserve these.”

He held up the jeans tentatively. Rosie’s eyes flicked to the swing tag. She’d given him a size 6.

_Weird question but_ — “It’s just that some clothing looks too good to be on someone my size. These pants were made for someone who’s a size 6. It’s lovely…” she eyed the pants. “But I don’t deserve to wear it.”

That only made Aziraphale more confused.

“But, how can you not deserve something? You’re human. You deserve anything and everything under the sun. Why would you deny yourself an earthly pleasure for such arbitrary and nonsensical rules?”

“They’re not arbitrary.” Rosie’s friend piped up. “People just know. There’s things you can’t wear if you’re my size.”

“But if you can’t wear them then why do they make them in your size?”

Rosie sighed and took the tone of someone explaining to a toddler why sand wasn’t nutritious.

“It’s just an unspoken rule. If you’re thin you can wear whatever you want, it always looks good. If you’re anything more than a size 6, you need to be careful. In case you look fat.” She cringed at the last word.

_Fat._

Aziraphale was reminded of a time when a jogging angel paused to poke him in the gut, scorning him for having something so simple, so very human. He’d never heard the word used with such loaded connotations than when Rosie spoke. His reflex was to counter with, what the humans love to hear, “you’re not fat.” But that defeated the purpose of the conversation. He would be inextricably aligning himself with everyone who “_just knew_” that the word should be taken as negative. A flaw that should be avoided.

Instead, “Do you ever think you deserve something, regardless of what you look like. That maybe that shouldn’t even factor in to your decision. That you just deserve nice clothes because you are you? You said you liked these pants.” Said the angel gently. “Surely that’s enough?”

Rosie hesitated, her mouth set in a thin line like she was determined to argue.

“Here’s a couple of pair I found in the back.” Suddenly the man was holding not one but four pairs of jeans. The girls thought nothing of it.

“I think you’ll find they’ll look great on you. You don’t need to change a thing.”

There was someone waving behind them.

Crowley, in his monkey suit and ridiculous moustache was trying to get his attention.

“We’re leaving, angel!”

Aziraphale pushed the garments in to Rosie’s hand and smiled encouragingly, before making his way over to the demon.

“Can we hang back a little, my dear?” He muttered as they walked out of the shop [4]. They loitered on the footpath as Crowley ran through his checklist of evil (which was, at best, inconvenience).

“Some one has changed all of the shirts to American sizing, and the customers are so confused. I couldn’t even think that up myself. These humans are amazing, angel!”

But Aziraphale was distracted. Two teenage girls were leaving the store, a bag in each hand and laughing together.

“I’ll wear them to the party if you wear your pair.” Rosie and her friend pinky swore on it. As the walked away, Aziraphale saw the mysterious jeans peeking out from their Primark bag.

“They are quite, aren’t they?”

[1] Or his interpretation, he hadn’t heard from her for a couple of millennia but he doubt it’d changed much

[2] Although Crowley would argue the actual costs incurred from discount retail were from the high physical and emotional costs of participating in consumer cultural

[3] A mental note, not an actual note thank-you-very-much, because it’s decidedly not cool to write things down

[4] Security gates beeping wildly because, yes, Crowley had invented them to sound at random… just to stress people out.


End file.
